Why are Old Farmers Quiet?

February 22, 2009

Why are old farmers quiet?  Some would say it’s because they are hard of hearing, and that would be true.  But I think it’s more than that.

A lifetime of seasons:  planting, growing, harvesting, dying.  A lifetime of doing:  Planning, trying, succeeding, failing.  What is there to say?  What is to be warned about when the failures made the man as much as the successes.

A humble farmer knows success comes not from him.  Sun, water, soil, seed, collaborate to make the miracle he’s witnessed many times. 

And who would say it isn’t a miracle?  Seed, carried in bags, stuck into cold soil in the spring.  Seed, hauled away in wagons in the fall.

A farmer’s work is faith in action; to believe in the miracle once again, and to act, by putting the seed into the soil.